100 years of motion-capture technology

“Fast-forward two years later, and computing power has doubled. GPU power has doubled,” Ovadya says. “Unreal Engine has added even more capability and even more realism, so all of a sudden, all of the background effort that went into Senua’s Sacrifice became just easier, shorter, quicker, and they were able to get to that point faster. So if they were investing the same amount of time for a project, let’s just say 100 hours, and the mocap part took 80 for Senua’s Sacrifice, for Siren it took an hour.” Siren is Vicon and Epic Games’ latest mocap demo, and it’s even more impressive than Hellblade. Siren is a digital human powered by a live actress wearing a mocap suit and facial-recognition rig, and the system allows for a level of spontaneity and realism simply not possible with the Hellblade set-up. The actress can improv, walk to new areas of the floor and say whatever she wants, all while a 3D avatar mimics her every move. “It’s really about a real human driving a virtual human and people not being able to tell the difference,” Ovadya says. Better mocap technology means developers can animate scenes in less time than ever, but Ovadya says that doesn’t mean production time will be slashed — it’ll just be better spent. For instance, if mocap for the Siren demo takes one hour instead of 80, he argues developers will use that time to make the final product look as lifelike as possible, adding background details… [Read full story]